Out of the spotlight: The rights of foreigners and minorities are still a grey area 18 registration official refused to register all applicants who claimed residence at one of these hostels, well-known for housing Afghan migrants, rejecting it as a “false” address. The relevant Ombudsman’s report has shown that another arbitrary measure, of requiring a rental agreement as proof of residence before an application could be lodged, was also instituted at the beginning of the year. Reports of access to lawyers arbitrarily being restricted during this phase of the asylum process have also been received. Lawyers interviewed by Amnesty International have claimed that officials refused to process applications completed by them on behalf of their clients on the basis that if the personal details of the applicant had not yet been verified, their signature authorizing the lawyer to act on their behalf could not be accepted. waiting to be seen by the officials, the vast majority of them turned away by police outside the building before they could be seen by an officer and told to return the next day. Lawyers present on the day stated that this is a daily phenomenon, so that many individuals who want to request asylum, as well as individuals who are seeking to renew their pre-application documents before they expire, are repeatedly turned away. As a result, they run the risk of appearing as “not having presented themselves to the authorities without delay”, or if they did, of having their authorization to remain in the country expire and of being at risk of arrest and detention of up to three months for overstay. As stated in the introduction, rejection rates in Greece are the highest throughout Europe. As this additional pre-application procedure is not taken into account in the authorities’ figures on asylum applicants and refugee recognition rates, its existence creates an additional concern over the high rate of rejection of requests for asylum. According to a 2003 report published by the European Council for Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) “the number of first instance decisions granting Convention or humanitarian status are extremely rare and, as far as the Greek Council for Refugees is aware, they do not exceed one or two cases per year... In 2003, no refugee status was granted [at first instance].”31 In an article in the daily Eleftherotypia in July 2004, UNHCR’s Officer for Protection in Greece noted that “almost no one has been granted asylum at first instance in the last four years”. 32 This apparently blanket rejection of applications at first instance exacerbates the delay in processing the applications and effectively renders this first stage of the examination process discountable: all of the lawyers and NGO personnel interviewed referred to “examination” in reference solely to the review stage and mentioned first instance examination only when specifically asked. Following this process, the actual examination of an application can take up to two years, with an average of one year being the usual case. Officials at the Department recognize the serious backlog problem and have been working hard to reduce it. However, they have pointed out that extreme staff shortage makes this task impossible. 30 In January 2005, when Amnesty International’s delegation visited the Department, there were two officials in charge of renewing the pre-application documents and three reviewing the applicants’ files. On the same day, there were about 150 individuals 30 UNHCR’s reports suggest that this is in fact a chronic problem, as it was raised in reports in 2002 and 2003 (UNHCR BO for Greece Annual Report on Refugee Protection in Greece in 2001, Athens, April 2002: 4; UNHCR BO for Greece UNHCR Positions on Crucial Issues Relating to Refugee Protection in Greece, Athens, October 2003). Amnesty International 5 October 2005 1.4.3 Blanket rejection of applications at first instance 1.4.4 Failure to fully explain the reasons for rejection 31 32 ECRE Country Report 2003: Greece, p.68 Stavropoulou, in Eleftherotypia, 26 July 2004. AI Index: EUR 25/016/2005